BOSTON (JTA) — Four questions. Four cups of wine. Four types of children. At Passover, the number four figures prominently in the rituals of the seder, the ceremonial holiday meal that can be mesmerizing and mystifying.Four new delightful and brightly...

I feel like I’m always walking around my house turning off lights in empty rooms. It bugs me to waste electricity, to waste money, lighting rooms unnecessarily. I do the same thing at my synagogue, too. But there’s one light at synagogue that never...

One of the most popular programs on television during the 1970s was “Happy Days,” a nostalgic comedy about the late 1950s and early 1960s. During a turbulent era (when have we not lived through a turbulent era?), “Happy Days” provided a romanticized...

When was the last time that you experienced God in the world? I experience God on the face of a stranger, in the beauty of the snow, in the intricacies of a flower. I know that the way I experience God in the world is different from the way you do.  We...

On the heels of the molten beast, we slipped. Make us a god, we said last week, because that man who led us out of Egypt, we don’t know what became of him (Exodus 32:1). Did we want a god, or did we want a leader? Rashi taught that we were confused;...

My first experience with this portion was 30 years ago when our eldest son became a bar mitzvah. Ki Tisa is found near the end of the  Book of Exodus. Half of Exodus is dedicated to the Mishkan, the Tent of Meeting or portable sanctuary of the wilderness.In...

Parashat Tetzavah forms the middle of a lengthy multiweek set of instructions given to the Israelites for the construction of God’s dwelling place. God speaks to Moses, and outlines in precise and sometimes difficult-to-follow language every possible...

After weeks of recounting stories of the miracles that God performs on behalf of the Israelites — from a small bush aflame but never consumed to plagues that continuously haunt the Egyptian people, the awe-filled phenomenon of the Exodus and the astonishing...

At my most recent checkup, my physician shared with me some of his family history. It was a particularly difficult time for his family, as only recently had the hospital that his father and two Jewish physicians founded closed its doors forever. As he...

Reb Moshe Leib loved his fellow Jews so much that he searched daily for lost souls. In one of his excursions, he found himself in a tavern and overheard the following exchange between two Russian peasants:  Declared the first: “I love you, my...

Part of my morning ritual is sitting down to a reheated bowl of overnight steel cut oatmeal, adorned with ancient grains and seasoned with toasted flax seeds. To the right of my bowl sits a mug of iced coffee and to my left is my trusty tablet reader...

Throughout my life, I’ve rarely been afraid of the dark. In fact, I often have been drawn to the darkness, particularly to find the beauty that can be seen only when it becomes dark. When we escape the “light pollution” of human origin, we can discover...